Moxyland
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3.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This frighteningly persuasive, high-tech fable follows four narrators living in a dystopian near-future, from the bestselling author of The Shining Girls.
"Moxyland does lots of things, masterfully, that lots of science fiction never even guesses that it could be doing. Very, very good." —William Gibson, author of Neuromancer
Kendra, an art-school dropout, brands herself for a nanotech marketing program. Lerato, an ambitious AIDS baby, plots to defect from her corporate employers. Tendeka, a hot-headed activist, is becoming increasingly rabid. Toby, a roguish blogger, discovers that the video games he plays for cash are much more than they seem.
On a collision course that will rewire their lives, these characters crackle with bold and infectious ideas, connecting a ruthless corporate-apartheid government with video games, biotech attack dogs, slippery online identities, a township soccer school, shocking cell phones, addictive branding, and genetically modified art.
Taking hedonistic trends in society to their ultimate conclusions, Lauren Beukes spins a tale of a utopia gone wrong, satirically undermining the idea of progress as society's white knight.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A Big Brotherly corporation provides public services for a Cape Town beset by a bad economy and plague-ridden slums in this reissue, an intriguing if somewhat shapeless near-future novel from South African author Beukes (Zoo City). The four leading characters are tangentially related through an anti-corporation sabotage plot. Tandeka is gay but marries a destitute and pregnant refugee to protect her. Kendra, a former art student, becomes a nanotech lab rat, who voluntarily becomes addicted to Ghost, a popular drink, and helps to promote it. Toby, whose vocabulary is largely limited to current and projected expletives, amorally mines video games for cash. Lerato, a gifted programmer who clawed her way up out of poverty, schemes to leave her corporate job for a better life. Their amorphous protest against their bleak society aims to create an alternate economy without SIM IDs, which pretend to provide ever-increasing communication but actually enslave people by destroying their humanity, even promoting "art" created out of animals' pain. Beukes delivers a stinging assessment of people who want their government to supply everything that they think they need.
